It's Urban, It's Real, But Is This Literature?

Controversy rages over a new genre whose sales are headed off the charts. By Malcolm Venable

With additional reporting by Tayannah McQuillar and Yvette Mingo

These days, it seems that nearly every black-owned bookstore and every street vendor's table-from 125th Street in Harlem to Jacksonville, Florida, to Chicago, and to Oakland, California, and back-is spilling over with titles in a new genre dubbed by some as urban fiction, by others as hip-hop fiction. These books are generally geared to younger audiences influenced more by TV, music videos and hip-hop culture than their Civil Rights Era-raised, Black Arts , Movement-nurtured, Toni Morrison-worshipping …